Artist:  Drawing_sofa
Character:  GibbyEnsign

Kousei had gathered a group of friends, ex-military members of his squad as well as young adventurers from the slave sanctuary city of Udo the moment that the underground contraption had restarted it's operation.

It wasn't a sudden affair but one that came as a result of the continuous efforts of his friend and Engineer Denise. Since then they'd had a falling out on the goals for the region and the Northern Mente (canine) returned to work for Kahani and the Northern Trading Company, leaving behind a basement stacked full of gems and eerie black portal that seemed to wobble, ebb and wane between the old hand repaired metallic relic of a machine.

The engineers still working on the project confirmed that it had portal was stable, in fact, it had been running for several weeks before the motley gang of veterans and novices alike from the military and civilian adventuring companies was pieced together by Kousei himself. They entered the portal together and hadn't been heard since.

At the same time Enitan had been taking his pack into the Northern Benes Mountains, a ridge of so many cold peaks that it was often thought of as uncountable. Having not enough gold coins to purchase the gems from the city, they instead decided to mine them themselves. You see, they had new pack members and we expecting some more soon! As such it was important to recover the magic channeling stones and to start to prepare them as soon as they could.

The journey was interrupted by a call that all of them heard, a long, low bellow from the warhorn known as Calamity. It was a Shaman weapon, forged by his own hands. Everyone could hear the tones that bellowed from it when blown but for them it spoke from the very soul of the one blowing it to the ones intended to 'hear' it, carrying with it the emotions and the thoughts of the caller.

When the call came he understood, no they understood what was happening, without having to say a word to each other the moved down the mountains heading towards somewhere safe. They meditated and using the power of the gems and magic embedded in them managed to manifest themselves in a far away place on Ntyne called Golem City.

Atleast that was the name of it a few centuries ago. Now all that stood of this once magic technology advanced city was ruins and old magic power machinery that mimicked the image of their creators. The forest which had once been kept at bay by civilization had already reclaimed every inch of space that had been carved out by them. The peaks of the trees were a few feet shorter than the tops of the four pyramid like structures, that appeared sunken in forest and green.

Old rope bridges, whose supports seemed to be replaced by vines, connected the structures. The stone approaches and landings or the bridges were worn and cracked by the constant raining weather of the tropics.

Immediately it was clear that something wasn't quite right. A massive ball of magic? Something else? Nevertheless it hung over the top of one of these pyramids, eating away at the structure and fabric of magic and matter itself. The black distortion seemed like it was growing in strength, seeking to slowly consume the entire city..

Enitan heeded the call of the horn, he didn't have time to study the implications and investigate what was going on, running across the creaking old bridge. On the other side a wall of awakened golem creaked into place, accumulated dust and dirt falling off of them as they shifted and readied weapons to defend the old city from any would be intruders..